


we, the children who laugh at the dead

by shilu_ette



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Keigo you suck at playing the hero, M/M, because wow people are idiots, everyone just needs to talk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:17:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5231867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shilu_ette/pseuds/shilu_ette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ryoma comes back after three weeks of disappearance, Keigo tries to piece together the evidence for the subsequent trial. Ryoma does not make it easy for him. Atoryo. WARNING: mentions of kidnapping and rape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dragged this from my fanfiction.net account, thought it was time to move all my writings from ff to ao3. work in progress.

 

 

 

"It's not much, of course," Keigo says, upon opening the door with the spare key. He had offered a nicer flat than this, with a full wired-security system and password-locked doors. Ryoma had laughed at him. "But adequate, I daresay. For," he pauses, uncertain how to proceed, "for whatever you have in mind."

Ryoma carries a duffel bag that is half his size. Inside is stuffed with last-minute clothes and tennis shoes, but no racket. The boy's hair is matted and inside a frayed grey cap, not the one he usually wears. Ryoma raises his head enough for Keigo to see the mirth in his hazel eyes.

"It'll do," he says, and he walks in before Keigo, surveying the small living room with adjacent the bedroom. He steals a look at Keigo from under the cap. Keigo wishes he would shun that bloody thing altogether. "You'll visit, yeah?"

"Yes, of course I will." Keigo follows him inside; taking care to arrange his own shoes pointedly next to Ryoma's own scruffy ones. "I thought that was the whole point of this little…." He tries to search for words; fails. "This little plan of yours."

Ryoma sighs. He drops his bag and kicks it away, uninterested already, and (finally) takes off his cap. His hair, Keigo notes, is a mess. He needs a shower.

"I don't mean because of the trial," he says, mocking, "You know. Just popping round, taking a look in."

"Ah." He raises an eyebrow; this is familiar territory and fallback. "You mean to keep you company?"

"Yeah, that."

"I'll see what I can do." Ryoma gives him a quick half-smirk that is barely formed before it disappears. Keigo looks around his minimalist surroundings. This flat will need a sofa, he thinks. A TV. Some books, although it was doubtful Ryoma would read them. One never knows, in the face of boredom and anxiety.

"I'll need food." Ryoma breaks the silence and his thoughts, sauntering over to the small kitchen and looking around. "And a fridge. Do you think I'll need a fridge?"

"Depends whether you can cook," Keigo says.

"Some."

"I'll call up some stores." He looks out the window leading to the narrow balcony: the sun is about to set and purple hues streak the light sky. "Tomorrow, first thing."

"Before class?"

"Yes, before." He pauses, and ventures out, "And what will you be doing about school?"

"Skip."

"Very smart, this plan of yours," Keigo says dryly, "What happens if your teacher calls your father?"

Ryoma shrugs. This reality of such questions is starting to irritate him. "My dad won't care. My mom's in the States."

"So no one to report you missing?"

"I won't be missing. I'll be in the courtroom, won't I?"

Keigo levels a look at him. "Will you, though?"

"I  _said_  I will. Don't be a nag."

Keigo sighs. "I really try not to be. You seem to bring out the worst in me."

"Boo-hoo."

Keigo smiles, walks over and touches a strand of matted hair. He leans over and lightly brushes the crown of Ryoma's head. Ryoma stands still, obedient.

"You need a long shower," Keigo says. "You smell horrible."

"Pot, kettle." Ryoma grins and flicks his fingers into the empty air, near Keigo's ear. "Do you want to shower together?"

His thoughts dissipate and freeze. His answer is reflexive, "No. I'd prefer a bath, it's been a tiring day."

Ryoma shrugs, not put off by the refusal. "Your loss," he says, full of cheer, and with a wave, Keigo is out the door and away from the flat and building. Before he goes, he takes one last look at the closed door: a bleached grey color, full of dampness that fills him with morose. He sighs and walks towards his chauffeur.

/

The next day, he finds Ryoma squashed in a wooden chair, his legs cramped up the seat, playing with a packet of cigarettes.

"I hardly think this is the ideal time to be exploring vices," he says, positioning his and Ryoma's shoes in parallels. He straightens up. "A man will be here soon. I looked up a sofa and a fridge."

"Good for you," Ryoma intones. He has torn off the plastic wrapper, but has yet to open up the case. A lighter is nowhere to be found. "My dad always smokes these things. Figures, if a retired tennis player can, why can't I?"

"Because you're not of age, for one."

Ryoma clicks his tongue. "Don't be so prim, monkey king. How was school?"

"You don't really care."

"I don't." Ryoma shrugs and flex his toes. "I thought it'd be polite though."

"You don't do manners."

"I do. When it suits me." He gives a sweet smile to Keigo, one that he doesn't return. He frowns and walks past the chair and into the bedroom. The only furniture is a sparse futon, with an abandoned paperback. He picks it up:  _Kafka on the Shore._

"You'll need a bed as well," Keigo says, "Stupid of me to forget."

"The futon's fine."

"It'll get cold soon. You'll catch a flu." He walks out again and hands the book over to Ryoma. "And reading. I'm surprised."

"I was bored," Ryoma retorts, frowning, "That was all the store got in English."

"Shame."

Ryoma looks up at him and blinks, once. "Staying for dinner?"

"If you have something."

"I have noodles." Ryoma tilts his head. "But I can't cook them."

Keigo sighs. He turns around to the kitchen and sees a plastic bag, groceries spilling out: a pack of raw noodles, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese. "You are terrible at being bored," he says, and walks over to the disaster. He turns on the stove.

"You're good at being mother," Ryoma calls from behind.

The dinner is quick and silent. Ryoma eats huge gulps, not pausing to chew. Keigo watches the sauce smear itself slowly on pale lips and around the cheeks.

He looks very, very young.

Keigo looks down at his own plate. He cannot work himself up an appetite.

"Did you poison this? You're not touching your own food."

"Just," he says, absent-minded, "Just. Not very hungry. Here, you can have it."

"Spoiled bastard," Ryoma says cheerfully, and takes up on the offer. He doesn't talk for the rest of the meal, just a loud clatter of a fork against cheap glassware.

He wonders what Ryoma had eaten while he was taken. Bread, perhaps. Gruel. Cereal. Then again, perhaps he had starved.

/

When they fuck, Ryoma looms above him, his hands pinning down arms. The light is off, and only the shadow of the boy's figure is mapped ambiguously, as Ryoma moves up and down without a sound out of him. He is still and pinned; his back digs into the thin blankets and the hard floor is painful to his bones. His arms are held captive and he thinks, so this is how it must feel being fucked.

When he comes, Ryoma doesn't pull out, and they had used no condoms. Ryoma lets out a harsh sigh that sounds like a bark, and smoothly swings his leg over, and lies besides him. Their hands do not touch.

When the body shivers, it is Keigo who turns and reaches out and it is Ryoma who edges closer, slowly.

"We don't have to do this," he says, his voice never softer. Ryoma turns these words into sharp knives, ready and slick for battle.

"Do you  _not_ want to?"

"It doesn't matter what I want."

"Of course it does. It used to."

"I'm asking you what you want."

"How romantic." He wishes there was a bigger window in the bedroom. The moonlight does not reach to illuminate Ryoma's face, so he cannot see his face. The voice, Ryoma has mastered at fine scorn and mockery, a façade his eyes betray every time.

He traces the shadows. "Fine, then. I don't want to."

"Liar."

A silence folds, stretches. Keigo doesn't know what to say to that.

"You were interested earlier." Now Ryoma sits up, but his head hides the light, so that Keigo only sees a shadowy face. "I mean. Your cock was."

He rubs is eyes. He wonders what time it is. "Don't be crass," he says, and it comes out as a tired rebuke.

"Do you want to have another go?" Definitely a sneer now, and Ryoma makes a motion to straddle him, "You're not that old yet, surely."

Before he could though, Keigo moves his arm and his fingers grip at an angled nape, and his fingertips dig fragile skin.

His silence is a warning, and Ryomd visibly flounders, sags. He settles back.

"Sorry," he says. "I don't know what got over me."

"I shouldn't have said anything," Keigo mouths. But the shadows will hide his apology because they are, in this empty night, meaningless.

Ryoma stays awake, fiddling his hands, and he wonders where he had stayed. Would it have been a cellar, a palace, a hotel, the backseat of the car, or a house, simple and ordinary as they come?

"What was his name?" he asks, as such thoughts trail and string themselves together.

There is a pause, and some shuffling of the blanket. Keigo gives up his share graciously.

"K," Ryoma answers, after several beats. "Don't you have to go home?"

Literary, that man. That bastard.

/

His name, in the courtroom, is Keiji Tamura. He is a professor and he is well groomed, slick, and scrupulously polite.

He gives a little smile when he sees Keigo amongst the audience, one that he doesn't return. He would, if the law allowed him, to tear out those black eyes that glitter in the fluorescent light. He is on a trial, that man. Does he have no fear?

Before the proceedings start, the man is seen chatting with his lawyer; going over the cases, the materials, no doubt, but all Keigo could see is that little curve playing over thin lips.

One of the prosecutors walks over to him with a cup of coffee. There is a slight sneer and grimace hovering in his lips: he resents dealing with a kid, Keigo knows, but then again, the kid was all he had to go on, and Atobe Keigo was not any kid slobbering over the holy sectors of the law.

"Not with the kid, then?" the prosecutor asks with a nod. "Him, Echizen-kun, was it?"

"He's resting," he says coolly; he means, out with your business, we have no room to be friends.

Another brisk nod; the man sneaks a quick glance out at the professor. "It looks bad," he says in a low voice, "I'm just telling you this now before the cross-examination starts. But there is nothing against him except for Echizen-kun's testimony. That guy is clean. The bodies we found have no link to him whatsoever, or at least the parts we found. You know about the bodies?"

Keigo nods, curt.

"Burned, all of them. What we have to go on are photos that don't even resemble human flesh. I don't know what Echizen-kun saw, or what that guy was planning, but we can't even trace back whether he took Echizen-kun and planned to do the same thing to him."

Keigo tries to find his voice and hardens it. "He's the living proof, isn't he?"

"His word against them," the man quickly corrects. "Echizen-kun came back alone, didn't he? Out of his own free will—and he wasn't the one who reported the case first." A meaningful look at him, and Keigo frowns.

"So would it be my fault that I had called the police as soon as he returned after three weeks?" he asks, deliberately light.

The prosecutor does a half-shrug. "It's not that, of course. It just makes everything a bit muddled."

"Muddled," Keigo repeats.

"Echizen-kun still hasn't handed in any words or taped interviews. Without his witness testimony, we can't do anything."

"I'll talk to him tonight," Keigo says, and with that last word, the court is about to begin.

He was supposed to be here, Ryoma.  _I said I will, don't be a nag_ , is what he had said while looking around his new hovel. Keigo remembers that broken half-hearted promise, and words, these days, are all he has to go on. He curls his fingers.

/

He does not visit the grey slab and enter the bleak door that leads to Ryoma today. He is exhausted. He allows the maids to draw him a bath, and while he undresses, his phone rings.

He does not pick it up.

A week ago, a skeletal body that resembled Ryoma had collapsed on the front gates of his house; after weeks of searching and harassing the neighborhood and the school, the boy appears out of thin air.

He did not speak, at first. His hair was streaked with blood and dirt, and his eyes roamed everything; they did not linger long on Keigo, but searched for something that was not there, surely. In the end, what Keigo got out of was nothing, and it had been up to him to call the police. Ryoma had answered every question with a vacant affirmative.

"Would this be the same man that took off with the bodies near Shinjuku station?"

"Yeah."

"What was his name?"

A shrug.

"Would you recognize him if you saw him?"

"Sure, why not."

"How did he take you?"

The gaze that traveled to the walls landed on the young officer who had been interrogating him. The officer looked unnerved, but repeated, "Echizen-kun, this is very important. How did he take you? Did he drug you?"

"I followed him."

"Yes, but what did he  _do_?"

Ryoma fiddled with his fingers, scratched his leg. Keigo's sudden thought then: he is apathetic. "He didn't do anything."

"You are hardly a child, Echizen-kun. He must have done something."

Ryoma shrugged again and a faint smile threatened to appear on his lips. "He offered me candy, I guess."

Keigo thinned his lips and intervened. "He's tired, officer. We could do this another time, yes?"

They never did have another time.

The phone is ringing, ringing, ringing. He sighs, an irritated huff, and goes over to take the call.

"I'm bored." Is the greeting.

He is silent, pondering. The water, he glances, must be cooling. He doesn't have time for this, he wants a bath, he wants silence, he does not want to think about leery professors and dead bodies.

"Monkey king, are you even there? I hear you breathing."

"You," he says, and the syllable is uttered with a single-driven contempt, "Are an absolute pain. Didn't we promise something?"

There is not even a pause as Ryoma answers, innocent, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The court date. Your testimony."

"Oh, that." A shuffling can be heard on the other side. "I lost track of time. Reading, doing some stuff."

He feels too angry to even conjure sarcasm. "And reading was more important than putting down a murderer behind bars, is that it?"

Now there is a pause. "He's not a murderer."

"He killed five people. And," Keigo draws in a breath, grits his teeth, "He might have done the same to you."

"Yeah, but we don't know that."

"You saw. You told me you saw them."

"I didn't. I never said anything." Ryoma's voice is sharp now; he's panicking. "What the fuck, Keigo. I never said that."

He falls silent. No; Ryoma had never said. But he has dreams, nightmares that make him sweat, and when Keigo wakes him up, before Ryoma moved out of Keigo's room and into his own squalor he calls a flat, he had struggled with the tangles of bed sheets, and Keigo had shaken him, whispered,  _what's wrong, what's wrong._

_Smoke,_  Ryoma gasped,  _Fire. The air's killing me, Keigo, we have to get out. You have to get out._

_You're safe,_  Keigo whispered,  _you're safe, I'm here._

_Smoke._  Ryoma is delirious, he does not know what he is saying.  _He's burning them, and he promised he me he wouldn't, but he is and I'm next, I'm next,_  a gasp.

His voice soft, Keigo says, "You had nightmares. Before you moved out, you talked about it in your dreams."

A harsh drawing of breath is heard. "There were overrated," Ryoma snaps, and the coldness can be heard from across the line, "Did you report that to the police too? They were dreams. They weren't anything."

"They have photos," Keigo goes on, "Of ashes. They match with your story. I thought it best to let them know."

"Fuck," Ryoma repeats, "Fuck."

"Why are you even defending him?" Keigo says, finally, running out of patience and cajoling words, soothing promises, "I don't understand you. You don't talk about the things he's done, you don't want to help with the trial, but you want the trial to proceed. You wanted the trial. You told me that you would give out the evidence."

"I am," Ryoma says, strained. "I  _will_. It's hard, okay? It's really, fucking hard."

He is pushing, Keigo realizes. With a sigh and a rub of his temples, he suppresses out the exasperation and all he is left with is an abyss of guilt.

"I know," he lies, because how will he ever know? He digs his fingers deeper into his forehead and looks out the window. The night is dark and empty. "Bored, you said?"

Silence, and a slow whisper. "No. I can't sleep."

"Moving out was a really stupid idea, wasn't it?"

"Was not. Your parents are there. It's weird. Do they know about me?"

"No," Keigo says, "You didn't want them to."

"Okay. Good." A draw of breath. "That's good."

"Do you want me to come over?"

"Do you have some Hitchcock films? Bring them with you."

Keigo lips form a smile. It looks terrible in the reflection of the window; he has not smiled enough to come out naturally these days. "Is my company not enough?"

"It really isn't," Ryoma says dryly, "You mope too much for the both of us."

"I'll bring something." He resolves to drain down the water. A waste. He dresses into casual grey jeans and a shirt, thinks, he must be calm and composed. He must not, in Ryoma's words, nag. He must wait, and be patient. In his dreams, he can have the luxury of stabbing the man, over and over again, instead of facing his present, of reminding himself of the three weeks he had bitten off his nails and waited for a miracle.

He takes the recorder though, just in case.

/

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Ryoma paces, wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt that hangs loosely on his hips. He hears Keigo enter, quiet, but he merely waves his wrist towards his presence.

"We should go shopping," Keigo says.

Ryoma's feet pad without a sound, in circles around the room; Keigo is dizzy from watching him. "Shopping?" Ryoma repeats, and he hears the disdain, "It's the middle of the night."

"I mean tomorrow. Your clothes are ragged."

Ryoma shrugs, another layer of irritation enwrapping him. "I like them. They're soft."

"And a suit," he continues, pretending he doesn't hear, "For your imminent trail."

"I thought that was today."

"The briefing was. It's not quite over." His lips trace out a mirthless smile. "But surely you knew that."

Ryoma stops walking and looks at him. His eyes bore his face and moves down his neck, chest, arms, hands (his lips curl at the small bundle where Keigo hid the recorder), legs, feet.

"Do you want to fuck?" he asks.

"No." The reply is instantaneous and curt; he sounds almost prim. "You brought me here because you couldn't sleep."

Ryoma frowns. "It was my pick-up line."

"You are terrible at being a flirt."

Ryoma shifts his feet, and his face is instantly slack. He pretends to look bored. "I don't need to with you."

"I'm sure." Keigo sighs and rubs his eyes. Already, he regrets the ride and the whim that led him here. He will be saddled with mind games and false tales, and when that is over, they will retire to bed and they will be left with the weight of silence.

"Did you bring the movies then?" Ryoma frowns and shifts his legs. He did not used to be so twitchy.

"No," he says, "I couldn't find them."

"Liar."

Keigo does not answer that, his feet already moving inside the cramped living room. Ryoma had already made it homely; he had, Keigo notes, already bought a sofa.

"Second-hand," Ryoma says, when he notices Keigo looking at it, "And it was a sweet deal, too."

"I was about to order one." Keigo surveys the furniture and nods. "But, if you prefer this."

"I do." The voice is not like the anxious plea across the telephone line. It is all false cheer and bravo. "Told you I've been busy."

"Well done," Keigo says dryly. Ryoma walks over to his line of vision and crowds his personal space. His eyes are full of black hair and hazel.

"Yeah, well done,  _moi_ ," Ryoma mocks, and the sudden slip is so sudden that at first Keigo does not recognize it. He frowns and wonders why he feels a chill hearing those words, and it is only after Ryoma's next line of conversation does he realize it. "So, what are we going to do then? Did you really come with no plan under your sleeve?"

K, Keigo realizes, was a Milan Kundera fanatic. When the police had burst in the den (he shudders at the memory) the place was devoid of anything but books: the classical works from  _Lolita_ and  _The Collector_  were strewn ( _how very cliché_ , one policeman to the other,  _why do we find these ratted books everywhere?_ ) but others, books of Kafka and Kundera were stacked neatly alongside a bookshelf against the wall. Below them: Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Flaubert. Keigo remembers these titles because they are works that he is familiar with (and that every child is familiar with, he'd like to think), and a sudden burst of general disgust consumed him that the professor could like something so classic, so widely read and loved. It burned him (and still makes him seethe) to even consider the possibility that this K was as human, as ordinary, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, just as he or anyone else was.

"It's always those quiet bookworms, eh?" one policeman muttered, not knowing Keigo could hear every word, "Last time it was a schoolteacher. This time it's a professor. A French professor, too, come look at this."

His companion snorted. Such a case was unoriginal to him; and so his reply was a lazy drawl and a careless dismissal, "Old misers. They think books can transcend to the real world. Tough shit."

"Hey," Ryoma says, and a snap of fingers jolt Keigo back to the damp flat, its ugly contours, in front of a person Keigo thought he'd never see again. "Hey, don't space out on me."

Keigo tries for a level tone; he fails. "Don't," he says, and his words are strained, "Don't use French. It's revolting."

Ryoma looks confused for a moment, and then it dawns on him. "What,  _moi_?" he echoes, and his disbelief is believable, yes, but Keigo is not fooled, "That's not even—"

"You," Keigo snaps, "have never spoken one word of any French in your life, and you most likely will never have. Don't start now."

It is one word that riles him so, and the anger is illogical. But he must remember, that the Ryoma before everything happened, was not this Ryoma that came back (from the dead, from the fire, from the guilt that consumed Keigo every night) and played the nonchalant teenager pretending everything was all right, c'est bien.

Ryoma stares at him, hard, glazed eyes and a set mouth. "Fine," he says, after a hard silence, "Fine. Whatever. I didn't know it freaked the shit out of you."

His anger is honed ice, coldness. Keigo wonders whether it was he who taught Ryoma that. He wonders how to coax it into liquid.

Before he can apologize (for that is one thing he had perfected brilliantly over the last few days) Ryoma steps towards him even closer, and soon he tastes a stale scent that is Ryoma's mouth (a toothbrush, Keigo notes grimly, he needs to by sanitary supplies next) and thin, wiry arms close around his neck and entrap him.

"I'm tired," Ryoma's voice muffles against a kiss; the words are inscribed inside his own mouth, "I don't want to fight."

(The old Ryoma—that is, the former Ryoma, would have never caved. He would have pouted and sneered until he got his way, and Keigo was always left with an exasperating resignation he was dating a child whose mental capacity was seven.)

Keigo doesn't reply to this, but he returns the kiss, dry, on the corners of Ryoma's lips and his cheek, gentle brushes, touching, gone. But Ryoma is insistent. His teeth click and snap, his tongue is wet and probing, and as Keigo tries to steer them away from the bedroom Ryoma just as strongly tries to steer them in.

"What," Ryoma gasps, irritation seeping with every breath, "is your problem?"

"Nothing," Keigo murmurs, what he hopes is a soothing tone, "Nothing."

"Bedroom," Ryoma orders.

"Mmmm." His tone is purposefully ambiguous, and his hands caress briefly along the side of jutting ribs and hipbones. "Here is good."

"It's not," Ryoma hisses, "There's no surface."

"We're not going to," Keigo says, and pauses. Repeats. "We're not."

"We're not what?" Ryoma shoots back, just as fast, "Not going to fuck?"

"Yes, that."

"Don't be so prim." Ryoma's lips curve this time, but it is not a smirk. A poor reflection/imitation/copy of a smirk, but not quite. "It's not the first time. Why can't you say it?"

"Because," Keigo tries, and fails. His silence is like acquiesce. Ryoma plunges on.

"You don't even have to do anything. You just need to lie down. We've done that plenty."

"I don't feel like it."

"You do," Ryoma challenges, "You used to. You used to want to. All the time." Each word is punctuated with a shallow roll of the hips and a buck. He tries to tangle his legs around Keigo and climb himself up. Keigo struggles for balance.

"Not now I don't," he says, weary enough to admit that he had, once (that was a lifetime ago).

"Well, I don't care what you like." A flash of teeth, brilliant white. "Just—here, lie down on the floor then. I know how to do it."

A sour taste invades his mouth. Keigo shakes his head. "Ryoma—"

"You're not the one who's getting fucked," Ryoma snaps, "Shut up and don't be a girl about it."

That does it. Keigo pushes the limbs off and tears himself out of the grasp and takes a step back. Ryoma falters, stumbles, but Keigo did not push hard enough to make him fall. He regains balance soon enough, and his eyes, when they turn to Keigo, are once again set hard to stones.

"Don't be vulgar," Keigo says, his own coldness carefully layered into his voice.

"Don't be a nun," Ryoma sneers. His answers are always quick and reflexive; does he put much thought into them? Keigo wonders when words were used not merely to taunt but to attack.

"You don't—" Keigo tries to search for the right words. "You don't just force people to do what you want. I don't know why you won't talk about it." (Lame, he refutes himself, very ordinary, very cliché, so many empty words.)

"Talk about it?" Ryoma's voice is growing shrill. "There is nothing to talk about."

"I don't want to," Keigo says tiredly, he is talking as he tries to pluck out the right words; what should he say next, what would be the magic words to make everything forgotten. "Isn't that enough?"

"I didn't want to either," Ryoma is no longer crowding his vision, but all Keigo could see are those eyes: wide and hazel, dark, murky, full of hate. "But that didn't stop you before, did it?"

Keigo's brain freezes. Before he can flounder and find words (a meaningless endeavor) Ryoma stomps past him and into his bedroom. He slams the door and inside, he is alone, and he, Keigo, is left standing alone with a sagging sofa for company.

He opens his mouth and a dry choke escapes him.

/

When is the before Ryoma had been talking about?

Keigo knows very well: before K and his lecherous words, they had been at that stage of puberty, when everything was funny and vile, and such jokes could transcend into hot breaths and kisses.

_I really don't want to_ , the Ryoma then (before-Ryoma, Keigo would label him as) would whine, but it was a casual drawl, and hidden laughter covering his eyes.  _Let's play another set, don't be such a pervert, monkey king._

And Keigo, who had merely been teasing out small kisses below the boy's wrist, would fling the hand back to its rightful owner and roll his eyes.  _You're the exhibitionist of us, Ryoma. Honestly._

And the then-Ryoma would laugh, cradling his flung wrist, eyes bright.  _Oi, are you sulking?A set for a kiss then. Fair?_

_Prostituting yourself over me, are you? How very grand._

(They are jokes, Keigo insists now, they were harmless jokes that did not foreshadow anything. They were laughs, hidden codes, messages.)

Logic-Keigo knows that Ryoma did not mean those words: that they were irrational sulks aimed to hurt and hit him (that has worked, no doubt). But they do not work on logic. What he feels is a reevaluation of their past conversations, recounting the times when Ryoma had wanted to play tennis instead of kisses, when he had wanted solitude instead of sex.

And then he remembers their last encounter before he disappeared.

They were at a park: after a casual stroll, Ryoma was opening a Ponta with deft fingers, while he was thinking of what to write for his final paper that would earn the approval of his professors.

They were laughing at something one moment, and then—for the life of him, he couldn't remember what—they were arguing over something silly, something inconsequential but had seemed the world to them at the time, and then they puffed and went their separate ways. A moment of biting his lips, he remembers, briefly, glimpses and glitches of the conversation.

_You're dating your own gender, Echizen, don't be such a prude._  (Here, he was annoyed, he presumed, because he had used surnames.)

Ryoma's reply to that: something meaningless, and then, a second later:  _yeah, but I'm not gay. As in, really gay._

_Are we even having this conversation here? Now?_

_Sure why not, since you brought it up._

_I don't see you having such sexual crisis when you're in my bed._

_Okay, we're not going there. Sheesh._

_No, really, now I find this all very fascinating. What brought this on?_

_Nothing, okay? I didn't bring it on._

And then some more arguments, more barbs, and then finally, Ryoma storming off and Keigo vowing to not call until the boy acquiesced to him, the too many times when he had caved because he thought, he must, he was older, with a weary sigh.

Only, when, he did eventually call him, nobody had picked up and the Echizen household (or what was left of it: Nanako) was a state of frenzy.

The end, or, the end of it as Keigo knows it. He sits down on the ragged sofa and rubs his eyes. He is tired, he cannot even summon up anger now.

He waits.

/

At three, Ryoma cracks open the door. He is not yet asleep, but he is still threatening to doze, but at the sound of the creaking, he sits up. He figures his eyes would be bleary. They meet eyes that are subdued and silent.

Keigo thinks,  _I am so tired_. Those are the only words meandering around his brain. It used to be:  _I wish he would speak_ , or,  _I could kill that fucking bastard_ , but his mind for now, is devoid of anything except a desperate wish to be in bed and never wake up. He is at the end of himself.

"I didn't mean that," Ryoma says, wearily, tiredly. "What I said before, I didn't mean it."

Keigo nods. Ryoma falters, but his steps reach the end of the sofa across from him, where they sit, side by side, a foot apart.

"I can't do it," Ryoma says; his voice wavers in the silent room. "You know I can't."

"The testimony?"

"That, everything. I can't go to court. I can't—" and here Ryoma stops. Keigo waits, because he knows that Ryoma is pretending he is choosing words, but he is only holding off tears.

"I understand," Keigo says, when Ryoma doesn't speak again. "But he won't have the main witness. You're the only one."

"I don't care," he whispers.

"He can be acquitted."

"Okay."

Keigo sighs and rubs his eyes. "Is that really?"

"Yeah. It really is."

"It isn't," Keigo stops, but presses on, "It matters to me." He presses his hands harder down to his eyes, pressing down his temples, the contours around his eyes, blackening his vision.

He hates Ryoma at this moment. He wants him to cry. He wants the boy to cry and yell something and vent out the emotions that must be somewhere inside of him. It is only then that he can reply with tears that he believes would be the key to his atonement. It is such a selfish thought, but anything would be better than this stalemate of vacant eyes and empty words.

"It matters," Ryoma says, but Keigo doesn't look up, "That you don't go to the courts anymore. Can't you just…stay here?" And then, a shift of movement and Ryoma is pressing up to him, his bony hands gripping his shoulders. "I need you here." And then there is a heavy weight on his back. "Please?"

Post-Ryoma is a Ryoma he does not know. He does not know a Ryoma who is so docile or so weak. He cannot imagine a Ryoma who begs and asks for favors. He can only imagine a Ryoma who laughs, sneers, disdains. His own hand comes to clasp that cold, foreign hand.

"If you insist," he says.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Trigger ahead for death and some bloodplay.

 

_What do you think justifies murder, Ryoma-kun?_

It was the first question K asked him, crouched across from him. Between them, a gagged and unconscious woman was tussled up, bound with ropes and cuffs. K was flickering a lighter back and forth. The single flicker of light was not deceptive to Ryoma, though: behind K, a gallon of gasoline and another gallon of ethanol was stashed against the wall. The flicker only made things more daunting, of what was to come. There was nothing to hear but K's words in the shed.

Flicker in, flicker out. K watched him, his beady eyes soft and deceptive, his voice even more so. He smiled when Ryoma flung his meal trays, smiled when Ryoma snarled the first few days, and still yet smiled when he had Ryoma stretched across a board and chiseled down and licked the blood that tricked beneath a thin penknife.

The woman would die, Ryoma had no doubt about this. It wasn't the first time he was to witness a burning: first the hair would catch fire, and the woman would wake. They all do: the nerve systems connect to the brain, the brain fizzles, the eyes pop. They would want to scream but K had taped the mouth shut with cloth gags and rubber for good measure. Either they would burn or they would suffocate. Their eyes would roll upward and blood would gush out of their noses. K would watch and Ryoma too, would watch. Would you like to be next, Ryoma-kun? K would ask in these occasions, and Ryoma stared hard that the ashen corpse, willing himself not to answer. In those moments, he did not know what he would say.

K had seen him in a newspaper. It was his match against Rikkai, a grand finale for the high school championship and his last tennis match before he might go pro. Prospective sponsors and coaches were all lined up, as were the newspapers, ready and alert as they work down the scores and the balls, how they would mold the match into a great drama. He had won and he had been the young bright star. The name Echizen imprinted in bold letters, a familiar name in the tennis circuit. It did not go past unnoticed, and K had noticed. He noticed things that interested him, K told him many times, his wiry fingers tapping against Ryoma's cheek. You interest me Ryoma-kun. I wish I could see you play. Only me.

"So, Ryoma-kun," K repeated, his smile intact as he flickered the light repeatedly. "Do you think anything can justify death?"

Ryoma knows what K wanted him to say. K was a literature professor who read about greatness and geniuses and failed anti-heroes. He himself was a plain man but he was clever, he told Ryoma, and this was while he had Ryoma gagged and bonded, yet his touches were very, very light. He had many speeches that he recited in front of Ryoma, speeches about humanity and genius and potential and the waste of humanity in such areas.

"But," he had crooned, "We're not such people, are we, Ryoma-kun?"

He had loosened the gag and Ryoma had spat at him. Then the chisel and the knife came.

He looked at K. At the time of the woman's death, he was not gagged nor was he bond. He was also kneeling, watching almost impassively, willing himself not to feel. In truth, he was apathetic to the death. He was too tired and hungry. He was empty. His wrists were scabbed and red. He was very, very cold.

"I dunno," he said dully. "I suppose God can."

"You don't believe in God, Ryoma-kun." K laughed this time, delighted that Ryoma even gave him a response. Ryoma had not spoken at all for the past few days and the silence, Ryoma could tell, was grating upon K. Perhaps K would burn him. Perhaps K would slice him up and burn all his separate parts.

"I don't," Ryoma agreed, after a moment. "I also don't know why you're asking me that."

"Death is interesting, isn't it?"

"No," Ryoma said shortly, and studied the woman closely. She was stirring.

"No?" K was disappointed. "It is one of the great human tragedies and wonders of nature, Ryoma-kun. We all disappear one day, do we not?"

You're a psychotic maniac who wants to goad me into philosophical debates I don't give a shit about, Ryoma thought, and he was surprised at the vehemence he was still capable of.

K must have noticed something on his face, because his next question was sweeter, sharper: "Is something the matter, Ryoma-kun?"

Ryoma knew not to voice such thoughts and he knew that K would continue to pester him for any excuse to strap him down and cut him up. He had been good for the past few days, it was beginning to annoy K. K was a maniac, but he liked to pretend all his actions were justified under the guise of reason.

"She's waking up," Ryoma pointed out instead.

K looked down, and flickered the lighter on and held it. "So she is." He stood up and went over to the corner of the shed where he retrieved the gasoline. A good half was gone already; K chugged it alongside him and put it next to Ryoma. He stopped and hiss forefinger came up against Ryoma's chin and titled it, so that Ryoma was looking at him. He met those eyes: soft and wise, benign. Deceptively cruel.

""Why don't you do the honors this time, Ryoma-kun," K said softly, and it wasn't a request.

/

In his dreams, when Ryoma screams fire, fire, it is not an abstract fire. He had reached out to Keigo in his dreams and screamed fire at him because his dreams were too real to dismiss. When Ryoma screamed that Keigo was to burn, he meant that Keigo was the first woman, tussled and tied and awake, and it was Ryoma who was pouring the gasoline upon a twitching body while K looked upon them, smiling.

/

Keigo comes to him to bring him food. He doesn't ask about the trial and Keigo never volunteers information these days. It is better this way, Ryoma knows, continues to convince himself, whenever Keigo looks at him with unbearable eyes. It's better this way and Keigo can give me shit for all I care.

"Tomorrow is K's testimony," Keigo says one night.

They are watching TV. Ryoma dragged on home one day and was glued to it, day and night these days, slept on the sofa, did not eat. He sometimes felt his life was over. He cannot look at a racket the same way ever again.

"That's good," Ryoma mumbled. He propped his feet on the couch aside Keigo. Keigo slapped them away.

"I'm sure there are other ways to describe such events," Keigo snaps, "Good is hardly the word. Do use your brains sometimes."

Keigo doesn't snap much these days. When it is, it is because of the trial, it is because of Ryoma's inarticulate ways to describe K, or it is with his failed intelligence in general. Ryoma looks at Keigo and glumly wonders what K saw in him to warrant kidnapping and spare him the fire.

"I can't," Ryoma tells him now, and he is surprised to find a fake voice dominating him, a fake cheery voice that fooled K but would never fool Keigo. "My brain almost got fried, remember? I don't think it'll come around soon."

Keigo starts; and Ryoma inwardly cringes himself. It was a bad taste of a joke, he thinks, but he reserved such morbidness only for his brains these days. He must have missed company to talk to, he thinks.

"Sorry," he immediately says, but Keigo's frozen face does not lessen so Ryoma continues. "You're the only person I see these days so my social niceties aren't really up to par. I'll grow out of it."

"You voluntarily locked yourself in," Keigo says slowly. His face is still immobile, blank.

"Yeah." Ryoma says, and turns away. He is suddenly annoyed, his earlier misgivings and apology quickly gone. He is tired of Keigo tiptoeing around him. He wishes that they could properly fight and Keigo could shout at him and Ryoma could shout back and blame Keigo for everything and Keigo would look unbearably guilty and do anything Ryoma asks of him. And Ryoma would ask him to stop mentioning the fucking trial, let K loose or whatnot, just don't go to the trial and stay here with me.

But of course he can't say that. Keigo had agreed only that Ryoma would not testify; it did not mean he would let loose his own nosy grip on the proceedings of K. Ryoma is irritated at Keigo's half-hearted guilt that is turning into justice. There is no justice, he thinks, hollow and raging with annoyance.

"You should go out, if you know that it is a problem," Keigo says. "Start breathing in fresh air."

"Yeah, well." And Ryoma refuses to say more, hinting that the conversation was over.

Keigo doesn't get the hint. "I thought you said you had a plan," Keigo continues, "When I first got you this flat. There must have been a reason why you decided to move out of your house."

"There wasn't," Ryoma says, determined to watch the screen. "I lied." He hadn't, but it was more complicated than what Keigo would surmise. This whole thing with K was more complicated than a simple murder case and Keigo didn't get that. The prosecutor will, the defense will, maybe even Keigo will, later on when more evidence is cleared. He wishes that sometimes Keigo would let go of things, maybe even give them up. But that wouldn't be Keigo, Ryoma thinks wearily. Fuck my weird preferences.

"Ryoma." And he finds himself manhandled for the first time since K, Keigo facing him, angry and cold eyes upon him. "Will you listen to me?" Keigo's voice is hard and steel, all angled and worse than any scream K has ever given him. "You're acting like an unwarranted child about this whole thing. You don't seem to care about how the trial would go. At all."

"Brilliant insight, monkey king," Ryoma drawls. He doesn't try to react to the two hands gripping his shoulders. The hands tighten. Keigo wouldn't hurt me, Ryoma thinks, unconsciously. He wouldn't hurt me, he wouldn't have done all this for me just to hurt me.

"It's distressing. More than that, it's plain idiotic and annoying. You wanted frankness, so be it. You act as if you want the madman to go free. What's more," Keigo leans over to him, and his eyes are icy and ugly, raging, "what's more, you seem to be waiting for him to be free so you could get yourself whisked off again."

Ryoma blinks at him and tries to wiggle free, but Keigo holds on tight. At the same time, laughter escapes out of him and he wheezes and coughs out a snicker. "Don't be ridiculous," he manages, "What the hell. All the court shit is getting to your brain."

Keigo just gives him a very cold smile in return and Ryoma's insides freeze. Ryoma tries to say something but Keigo closes the space between them and Ryoma is trapped, secured by Keigo's hands and Keigo's eyes and his dry and chapped lips. Keigo doesn't taste of his usual mint. He tastes of stale ash. Ash and dust, dryness.

Ryoma breaks free of the kiss, a mess of slick saliva. Keigo's eyes are so close and lips so near. "Let go," Ryoma says harshly. It comes out as a whisper.

Keigo's lips curve again and it is mirthless. "You wanted this," Keigo says, and Ryoma sees a deja-vu of faux-sweetness. Used against him, the fake sugar grates at him, nauseates him. He wants to throw up. "Didn't you want this only a few days ago? Haven't you been consistently pestering me about it?"

"Not now, I didn't," Ryoma says. He tries to bounce it off as casual. "Later, sure. But we were talking."

"You were spewing inane and unfulfilling commentary and I was getting sick of hearing them," Keigo says. He licks his lips. Mockery, again, Ryoma realizes. "So why don't we use better time with what you have incessantly suggested. It might get us somewhere."

"I really don't," Ryoma snaps, and he sees it then: Keigo's spark of triumph, his ah-hah moment, that he could still goad Ryoma in reactions.

"You don't?" Keigo parrots, but once he saw the flicker of satisfaction, the eye-reaction, he can't help it. He stares at Keigo's eyes, only he does not see Keigo in those grey orbs. He sees K's.

"Keigo," he says more quietly. "Let go of my arms."

Keigo thinks he has it. He thinks that Ryoma would be the first to scream. It's what he has been wanting all along: for him to break down, for him weep and cry and scream. For what? Ryoma wanted to ask him, for what, what good does it do? Is it going to save me? Is it going to erase anything? Is it going to bring all the dead bodies back, is it going to banish your warped sense of guilt?

It's Keigo's certainty that makes him sick, his conviction that this is all he has to do. It's Keigo's smile that makes him freeze and retrace back his memories in the cramped shed, the whole pretense of philosophical debate when it was all a bait and lure game. K wanted Ryoma's reactions and now Keigo does too, albeit in a different way. They want him to act in ways that he doesn't care to act.

Keigo tilts his head and smirks. It has been awhile since Keigo smirked, and it looks forced and jarred. It still does not look pretty. (Why are they acting with each other? Ryoma wonders, his senses in alarm. They shouldn't, he would only act with K.)

"If that's what you want." And Keigo drops his arms and Ryoma is left to gingerly rub hiss own hands against his shoulders, glaring at the older boy, quelling down the unease inside him.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" he says scathingly, ignoring his heart, rapidly fluttering, "You could have done that on the first try."

Keigo just looks at him with that fake smirk until it falls off and Keigo looks tired and more harrowed than ever, and this time, it is Keigo who first breaks off his eyes first.

"You look as if I would kill you," Keigo says, matching Ryoma's earlier quietness, and Ryoma starts, violently. He stares at Keigo. "You look as if I could be K." Keigo stands up and leaves Ryoma perched on the couch, his eyes boring a hole into the wall where Keigo had sat previously. "I don't know what to wring out of you these days, Ryoma." And Keigo's voice is farther and farther away, and an inner voice screams at him to stand up and run after him, grab a wrist, a leg, anything-but he is glued to his seat.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I realize that Ryoma can be a bit Ooc for this piece, but I honestly could not flesh out a bratty Ryoma when he had been kidnapped and brutalized. Hopefully I could pull that off for the next chapter.
> 
> This will be in two or three parts, depending on how long I'll write out the ending!
> 
> Thank you for reading, and reviews and criticism are always welcome.


End file.
